Friday, October 5, 2012

GHC 12: Unlocking the Clubhouse: A Decade Later and Now What?

Oct 5, 2012- Day three at the Grace Hopper Conference in
Baltimore. Here is my next blog from an invited technical speakers track. This
talk had an interesting title "Unlocking the Clubhouse: A Decade Later and
Now What?". The title in itself was very thought provoking. Here is the
abstract for the talk:

Abstract:

In the decade since Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in
Computing was published, educational institutions have coalesced around
the mission of increasing women’s participation in computing. Yet, despite the
uptick of interest in computer science majors and the surge of technology
shaping all aspects of our lives, the numbers of women majoring in computer
science are still abysmally small. In this talk, I will reflect on why this is
the case, and make connections to the issues raised in Stuck in the Shallow
End: Education, Race, and Computing—the underrepresentation in computer science
of students of color. As this talk is occurring one month before critical US
national elections, I will examine how underrepresentation in computing relates
to the larger issues we face as world citizens.

The speaker, Prof. Jane Margolis is a senior researcher at
the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and is the
author of two award winning books: Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Comuting,
and Stuck in the Shallow End: Education Race, and Computing.

Jane came up the stage with a bright smile on and started the
talk with some statistics about under-representation of females in
CS:

25% of female in computing workforce in
2011

18% of female into CS in 2011

14% of female into CS in 2010

I was surprised on seeing these numbers. Only 25% of female
in the computing field is startling! Jane then spoke about the startup
cultures and the number of women in startups. These numbers made me all the
sadder. Most of the women are in marketing and PR, so the actual number of
women in engineering is far less than what is shown here.

Foursquare: 6/40

Dropbox: 3/35

Tumbler: 1/16

Vimeo: 4/31

Kickstarter: 4/14

Square: 10/54

Jane bought up the interview with Jack Dorsey (co-founder of
Twitter) about the number of female interns in Twitter. Jack’s reply was
“Not in this batch…we’d love to find some”. My heart sank hearing this. “Not in
this batch???” What does he even mean?

So, what are the main questions ahead of us now?

What should we do NOW?

What are our goals?

What are our strategies for change?

Why is this issue important considering everything else going
on in the world?

Jane started with a little background about her. She started
at Pacific Bell as a telephone installer (after graduating with a degree in
social science). She knew nothing about working with tools- absolutely nothing!
The phone company was forced to put women into this job because of the civil
rights movement, and women’s liberation movement. So, they trained women about
the process. Through that process, Jane discovered that she actually loved the
job. Small things like “you don’t have to dress up for this work” made Jane
fall in love with this job even more. This was a life-changing experience for
Jane realizing that these opportunities were never being given to women for no
reason. Her journey started there…

Jane later went to Grad school and got her PhD in Education.
Her main focus was on access and opportunities. She was also a visiting
professor at CMU. The key findings during her stay at CMU (from interviewing
girl students) were:

Norms,
Standards, Expectation were based on a small subset of males

Women
suspect, lesser, just because of their gender

So, what are the key factors for social change?

Date
from your own backyard (so none could deny)

Insider
champions!

After this study, Jane was determined to study the cause for
underrepresentation of women in CS. She got a NSF grant for the same. Her key
findings include:

->Technology
not the great equalizer

->Disparities
in opportunities

->Issues
are systemic:

oStructural

oNormative
(Beliefs)

oPolicy

These beliefs and policy affected everything- ranging from
the curriculum offered in the school to CS being considered just a vocational
course. Jane found it hard to believe that floristry and CS were given the same
credit at few schools.

All these findings inspired Jane to create a course called “Exploring CS”. It
is predominantly used in the LA schools, and its being picked up around the
country (around 70 schools). This is a course designed to show kids who don’t
have experience about the numerous opportunities in CS, and how it is relevant
to them. The course is tailored for them to show what they can achieve with
technology. Presently, 40% of ECS students are girls.

What I loved about Jane’s way of speaking is the intuitive set of questions she
asks that makes you think. So, the next set of questions that Jane put forth
were:

So,
what should we do now?

Learn
and discuss more about… Theories of social change for action

How
do we amplify our voice?

There is a lot of unconscious bias against women in
the start-up world. Bias is within everybody and within us all, but
we all need to be more conscious to be aware of this unconscious bias within
us. Jane bought up reference to two topics here:

->Reference
to Square intern picture

The interns at Square released a
picture that caused quite an uproar amongst women in technology. Apparently
Square did not find even ONE single female intern. All the 15 interns at Square
were males. I wonder what Square has to say about this.

-> Reference
to the resume study (for the science lab).

The researchers at Yale University
conducted a study for a position for a science lab. They had the same resume
with just the names changed- one as a male student and other as a female
student. The findings were startling. But Jane says she is sadder that
this finding is a surprise! She asks “Isn’t this just known already?”

We know this exists- Ok, so what are our strategies for
social change? What do each one of us think in a situation like this?

The solution is simple: There are NO quick fixes! We need to
form communities wherever you are- there needs to be a social change. We as
women need to raise our voice in situations like this. WE are the answer to
such questions.

The world of computer science has totally changed our
responsibility. So, what is our responsibility? Jane answers this question with
a series of pictures. (Sorry! I wasn’t able to take a picture of them)

1) Work-family
balance (May 1998 New Yorker- Child Care- woman sitting in a construction site
and breast feeding her child)

2) More Work-family
balance (Two guys on a life boat and cribbing about not having a smart phone to
do their work)

3) Exclusion- July 23,
2012 New Yorker (Family on a vacation- and everyone looking at their own
phones- is this even called a vacation?!?)

4) Global
consequences of CS and Technology

5) Growing
inequalities

I feel the main motive of Jane’s talk is to make us think
through her questions. THINK. Because only when you think- you realize what you
should be doing and what you actually are doing. Think..and Think more…

How
do we deal with the contradiction, the biases?

What
do we do with all the pictures above (topics)?

What
should our response be?

What
have we be doing so far?

If we have actually been doing something- why haven’t the
needle moved yet?

These questions made me realize a lot of things. I hope it
did to you too…